The National Transportation Safety Board said the principal blame rested with pilots of the Northwest Airlines DC-9, who got lost in fog Dec. 3 and strayed onto a fog-shrouded runway, where their plane collided with a Northwest 727 that was preparing to take off.

"We are surprised that this much could go wrong," said James Kolstad, the NTSB chairman. "There was a variety of people to blame."

Eight people died aboard the DC-9. No one aboard the 727 was injured.

The safety board placed much of the blame on a "lack of proper crew coordination," but it also cited inadequate actions by air traffic controllers; poor markings, signs and lighting on the runways; a failure by the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates airports, to find or correct those problems; and inadequate pilot training at Northwest.

Mr. Kolstad said airport officials apparently have corrected only one of the problems, closing the runway intersection through which the DC-9 mistakenly strayed.